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Tips on Getting More Done

October 11th, 2017

1. Get up earlier in the morning
Some productivity experts recommend about two hours earlier than you normally do. This will help you to get your day off to a good start by establishing a morning routine. It will give you time to exercise, to eat a good breakfast, to plan your day and what you will tackle first when you get to the office.

2. Do the most important thing first
Don’t put it off and waste time by checking email or tackling other more trivial work. Get to it right away. The best time is in the morning when you are fresh and most energetic.

3. Focus on progress, not just results
If your ultimate goal seems far off, something achievable only after a long time and a lot of work, your energy and motivation may flag. To maintain your drive and determination, you need to focus on the progress you are making toward the ultimate goal.

To do this, you may want to set up benchmarks, smaller goals that you set along the way to your final objective.

4. Plan and set priorities
You need to determine those tasks that are more important and urgent. Once you have determined your priorities, you need to plan how you will go about accomplishing those tasks, a step-by-step approach for getting things done. And you need to set up a schedule for when you will do those tasks.

5. Highlight the minutes, not the hours.
In other words, you need to focus on the present, the now. The present is the only real time you have. If you focus on the number of hours you are going to work on something or have worked on something, you are dealing with the future and the past, each of which is out of reach.

6. Don’t multitask
There are reams of research now debunking the idea of multitasking. It actually slows you down and hinders your productivity rather than increasing it. Our minds are constructed to focus only on one task at a time.

7. Establish routines
These are great time savers, freeing up time for more important things. A routine is like a habit, something that you do automatically, that doesn’t force you to use up a lot of energy making decisions.

8. The perfect is the enemy of the good
In other words, don’t be a perfectionist. You can achieve excellence without perfection. If everything has to be perfect, you will never reach the goals you have set for yourself because achieving perfection is impossible. Keep moving ahead, even if the work is not perfect.

9. Leave some free time in your day
This gives you some wiggle room if you need it. It also gives you a little time at the end of the day to review what you have done, to reflect on your day and think about what you can do differently or better, which has been shown to increase productivity.

10. Don’t waste time complaining
It accomplishes nothing.

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